Fleets above, Mechs below (brainstorming, open for participation, non fiction)

[Gorgon]

Recently I've been thinking about how to reconcile are more prominent role of space battles (and warships) with a 'Mech focused setting through fiction. Here a some thoughts on the topic. Please feel free to chime in with your own opinion. And if anything in here sounds interesting to you, please borrow liberally!

Every once in while the topic of space warfare and space travel in BT comes up on these forums. It's a scifi setting after all and all those stompy robots have to get across space somehow to beat each other up. Also, space battles can be cool in their own right and we have a number of warships, dropships and ASF that probably seldom see use on the table. This may be a rules problem (as is currently discussed in the Aerospace forum), but I'm too ignorant on that topic to really comment on it.

However I am certain that the universe provides little excuse to smash two small to medium fleets together, given how small warship numbers are. But the fiction gives us plenty of excuses to fight any kind of lance to company sized ground conflict. There are always skirmishes going on somewhere. So how could we promote more space battles without losing the fictional justification for small unit ground conflict?

The problem

• If we want to have 'Mech fights, our 'Mechs have to meet each other to fight. So one side has to be able to move their ground forces from one world to another with a reasonable chance of success.
• Ground fights have to be meaningful. If warships can use ortillery to intervene decisively in ground combat, the outcome of the space battle more or less determines the outcome of the ground action.
• Combat in fiction (whether on the ground or in space) has to happen regularly and on a scale that can easily be reproduced at the table. So lance to company sized engagements for classic, lance to battalion for AS. I lack the experience with AeroTech to confidently suggest a good average force size for space combat. So feel free to suggest something, AeroHeads!
• Independent small forces need to remain viable. Mercenaries, pirates and anything in between are central to the setting. Using them as protagonists and antagonists has to be possible within the fiction.

Suggestions
I hesitated to call the following a solution, because it really just is my idle musing. I'll be focusing on the IS first and foremost, because I think the Clans already have most of the tools in place to fix this for Clan on Clan conflict. More on that later.
A) Expanding cultural and political limitation on warfare
International agreements on how to wage "civilized" war are part of the setting from the very start. The Ares Conventions are referenced in several early novels and provide an excuse why conventional warfare is possible in the first place, despite WMDs being readily available to all major factions. If orbital bombardment is seen as just one step below WMDs, it will give the ground units breathing room to do their thing without constantly having to worry about instant death from the skies. Ortillery could still be used, but it would be politically costly to do so. You probably won't resort to it in the battle of Dustball III, but the 42nd Battle of Hesperus may justify it.
It would attach to this some unspoken conventions regarding unit size. If you don't want to become a target of the McKenna above, don't provide too tempting a target. The big guns won't come out for a company or two, but if you're amassing five divisions, you may just be painting a bull's eye on your self. This could develop into the idea of giving the opposition a "sporting chance". If your whole planet is defended by only a token force of two Mech lances and a mixed conventional battalion you may suffer the occasional raid. But unless one of your snipers shoots the Coordinator, your cities won't be obliterated from space.

This could give justification to the prevalence of 3rd SW style raiding and small scale battles over fairly unimportant border worlds. Large scale battles would be reserved for targets that merit ignoring some of the conventions of war.

B) Fight near valuable things
This is basically an expansion of the first point. To give a plot shield against ortillery (or WMDs for that matter), have ground combat focused on important infrastructure the attacker tries to take undamaged. If the whole reason you came to the unappealing world of Leadsky is to take the local fusion reactor factory, you'll make sure to apply surgical force in and around that factory. The defenders know that of course and may center their defense around it and other important infrastructure. But again, don't make yourself too tough. If the defenses could not reasonably overcome with conventional forces, the attacker may be more interest in destroying instead of taking it for themselves. The other option is to include fixed anti space weaponry in and around the truly valuable stuff. If you plan to dig out Defiance Industry with the help of your navy, better be prepared to take some losses from ground fire. Or send in your elite 'Mech forces to silence the guns for your navy to do their thing. You now have a fun ground scenario to play out!

C) Scale of escalation
So the threat of warships could be used in fiction to incentivize the defender not for fortify their worlds beyond a certain level and to keep militias in the low numbers we already see in fiction. But what about the attacker? What's keeping them from descending on your world with fleet of 20 warships and a whole RCT to wipe out your two measly companies in minutes? Political concerns. Before you assemble a force to teach those Dracs a lesson, you have several factors to consider.

• How many ships and troops have I available? This is completely arbitrarily and depended on the story at large. So we'll ignore it for now.
• What's my goal? Do I want to raid? Do I want to conquer this world for it's own sake? Is this just the first step for a much larger invasion?
• How large is the opposition expected to be? You don't want to go in weaker than the defenders but you may not need to over prepare.
• What's the scale of the larger conflict? Is it all-out war? Is there a lull in the fighting with the occasional raiding? Something in between?

If we send our force across the border, the reaction we're getting will depend on how we answer those questions.

If it's the 1st Succession War with worlds dying left and right, a small raid on a fairly unimportant world probably won't excite a major reaction from the enemy. There likely will be no enemy reinforcements and it may not even make the evening news on the next world over. This will not escalate the current conflict and in fact may be part of a strategy to transition away from high intensity all out war.

If for the last ten years there have only been small cross border raids and we suddenly assemble a large force, it will be noticed and there will be a response. Just by concentrating a fleet of forty ships and three RCTs you will escalate the conflict. Any incursion of such a force can not be ignored and will to much heavier fighting in short time. Just assembling it may be enough to signal your intend to shift away from hitting minor targets and concentrate on more important (and better protected) planets.

This can also be applied to the actual operation. If you want to communicate to the opposition that you intend to keep to the rules of warfare, you can start by keeping your warships out of the orbit of the planet after they have achieved space superiority. I could even see a "safe zone" around the planet becoming a convention of restricted warfare were both sides try to keep warships out of the immediate vicinity of the planet. This could go so far as to hold your fire on invading dropships once they start entering the atmosphere or are past a certain line. Or at least only engage them with non-warship forces. (ASF, ground fire)

Warships would thus become an important tool in setting a base line of how intense this operation is going to be fought.

D) Warships need to be plentiful

Obviously if we want to have regular space battles featuring warships we have to have enough ships that any invading force is willing to risk some and has a high risk of running into enemy ships. If we want to keep fleet actions mostly to smaller engagements I would suggest something like one warship per Battlemech battalion for the major powers (Great Houses, major Periphery nations). This should each nation enough ships to pull two or three together for a smaller operation while running regular patrols of a similar size along their borders and still keep enough reserves handy to enact or counter major offensive actions.

I think I'd personally would lead towards large numbers of light to medium ships (your corvettes, frigates, destroyers) and a small number of heavier ships (cruisers, battleships). But that's just my personal preference. Include supporting elements like ASFs, smallcrafts and various dropships (assault, carrier, maybe even pocket warships) to your heart's content.

You'd likely also want at least some ships in the hands of powerful non-state actors. Multi regiment mercenary companies could maybe field a squadron of lighter ships. I'd also give some to a powerful pirate, every now and then. With the hundreds of ships fielded and lost since the Age of War there should be enough derelicts to be restored and let loose against the interstellar shipping lanes of the future.

 So far for now. I'll add some more thoughts later.

[AlphaMirage]

I wrote a whole bunch of digital ink on the subject in my Star League's Guide to Warships (linked in sig below). So I'd like to add a few things to the topic.

Big naval weapons are horrifically inaccurate so if fighting near sensitive sites you wouldn't want to use Ortillery. Ortillery is also not super useful against small targets which would be the majority of them. It is unlikely that any large formation would be assembled in the open when they knew a Warship was overhead (no Stealth in space, you'd see it millions of miles away) so they would break up and make themselves basically impossible to hit for a Warship. This makes for fun stories of cunning mercenaries hiding in a distant jungle while an enemy warship is overhead. What is useful are pocket warships armed with missiles since those are much more precise and importantly cheaper so you can have more of them looking for targets to blast with some teleoperated missiles. Since you are already bringing Jumpships you might as well bring a few Pocket Warships with you to support. These are not quite such devastating weapons (unless nuke topped) and can be integrated into regular play as they are basically a Long Tom shell crashing into your mech.

Any heavy fortifications requiring Ortillery would almost certainly be underground and the area around it would contain masses of surface to orbit missiles possibly topped with nuclear warheads (Ares Convention says Nukes vs Space is good) or (Sub-)Capital weapons in groundside bunkers. So getting close enough to come into range of those with your Warship is foolish. You are needlessly putting yourself in danger when you could instead use (grounded) dropships armed with Cruise missiles and ground forces to take an objective or at least bottle up the defenders and break their stuff. This is not true of even armed space stations which cannot hide, evade, or run away from your attacks making them easier and more dramatic prey for even light Warships.

Warships are horrifically expensive compared to the (possibly) Wings of Aerospace fighters needed to destroy or damage them that could be based groundside in many distributed locations particularly if they are packing Anti-Shipping Missiles or loads of bombs. In a universe with plentiful Warships there would likely be an appropriate expansion of space stations, fighters, shuttles, assault dropships, and other orbital infrastructure that would naturally lead to Warships (pocket or otherwise) being used to capture recharge stations and the like and deny that infrastructure to the enemy up to and including boarding other jumpships and stations with Marines.

Additionally you are wasting the biggest most expensive component of a warship by putting it in planetary orbit, the KF Core. If you get in trouble or its a trap a warship cannot escape Squadrons of Assault Dropships or Wings of Aerospace Fighters before they can at least engine kill it. Once engine killed its a sitting duck for Marines or Missiles. Warship Squadrons are better used to hold high planetary orbital space or the Z/N jump points where they can see defending Aerospace fighters coming long before they could reach them. Preferably just out of internal fuel tank range too as you could take away external hardpoints from Anti-Shipping missiles if they need more fuel pods.

Furthermore since Pocket Warships are cheaper than Warships and you'd already see an expansion of naval power you would have more jumpships which can importantly give Pirate Admirals the ability to chain jumps together in order to move a Squadron of PWSs into a sensitive position faster than even a double jumping Warship could. These could in turn raid your orbital sites faster than one could respond and be gone just as quickly incentivizing smaller, less expensive (but still very) Warships like Corvettes that are just powerful enough to give a few PWS a good fight.

[DOC_Agren]

I will like to add some:

You can have "fleet actions" but those would only occur during major wars when fleets are assembled.  What you might have is limited ship conflicts more along the age of sail, when 2 or 3 warships encounter each other and decide to close, or when a squadron makes a strike on enemy infrastructure. 

What would happen is I think you would all see that that most worlds would have some sort of Planetary/Close Orbit Defense Command.  If warships stay available.

In my mind this would be made up.
Defense Ships - Dropships/armed shuttles at minimum forming a Coast Guard/Custom style force that can have their own Aerospace Assets. 

Aerospace Assets - Now these assets are commonly used to stop incoming/harass incoming raiders ships.

Defense Forces - Perdeployed around strategic targets.

Any Warships - If in the system can be intergrated into the defense plans.

[Cannonshop]

Define your central issues;

• "What is a Navy for?"
  
  
  • "What jobs does a Navy do, that can't/shouldn't be done by the Army?"
  • "How is a Navy different from an Air Force?"
  • "What are your Technical hurdles/requirements?"
  • "What kind of budget are you working with?"-not everyone has unlimited funds for a thousand Leviathan III's to squelch a tiny neighbor.
  • "What are the neighbors doing?"
  • "What are the long-term strategic goals?"
  
  "What are the political factors at home that influence your procurement?"
  
  "What does the command and control situation look like?"-this is a big one, because it influences everything from strategic goals and intents, to the viability of methods.  If you don't have a robust, secure communications network, having lots of different, specialized ships isn't going to do you a whole lot of good, likewise, strategies that rely on quickly mustering defenses or shifting forces are hobbled by weak or nonexistent communication.  (It doesn't do a lot of good to have that squadron spread across your province, if they don't have the ability to gather for defense at a moment's notice..or at least, quickly enough to respond to a probe.  Having a deep investment in your COAC forces doesn't do a lot of good if the enemy's preying on your merchant shipping far from stable orbit, and so on.)
  
  Your navy is also (More than likely) your logistics network for your army.  (Interstellar Nations are like archipelagos, not like continents.  everything has to go by ship or it doesn't go, there are no railways between stars.)  This creates certain demands on your Navy's resources-they have to be able to haul your troops, beams, bullets, and blankets, and in-transit is the one place where having a Regiment of elite ground troops isn't going to do you much good against a couple companies (squadrons) of regulars in cheap ASF's.
  
  Strategy is also influenced by things like technology available-if you don't have inertial compensation or powered-non-spin-non-thrust gravity, pulling 4 gees for the hours needed to get your gropos to ground is going to ****** those gropos right up, they'll arrive fast, and in no condition to fight.
  
  This, too, should be an influence on your force structure and tactics, because an interceptor probably ISN'T hampered by needing to keep a few hundred to a few thousand ground troops in fighting shape, and CAN invest more in resistance training and flight gear per man while still being cheaper than the ship hauling the troops in (and smaller).
  
  FASA and Catalyst only remember these when it's 'plot appropriate', just like they only remember that there isn't inertial compensation or artificial gravity sporadically, and only remember these aren't galleons fighting in a narrow inlet rarely.
  
  
  
  

[Cannonshop]

"What is a Navy For?"

Obviously, a Navy is going to center on transportation.  This is whether it's serving as the transport agency, or serving as security for it, or attacking it, long distance transport is central to why you build ships, and it's absolutely necessary if you're going to have your fictional nation operating on an interstellar scale with colonies or member solar systems.  Beside this, is the role of Communication-especially if you can't pick up a phone in your capital and call your most distant border easily and without interruption of service.

This is before you GET to power projection or dealing with someone else's-Navies are forces designed to operate in a fluid (or vacuum) environment where you can't just march your soldiers by shoeleather express from point A to point B.

In a terrestrial sense, this is even true of riverine and river-delta forces, littoral forces, and lake forces akin to the second US/Canada conflict in 1812-1815.

Transport is critical to the economic infrastructure of nations, and in the case of nations wehre you literally can't build a road network to bind them together, the Navy is how you secure the transportation network that feeds your factories and moves your soldiers and supplies.

Navies are also, because of this role, ideal for attacking an enemy's transportation network.  It's a basic thing, really, the best protector for commerce is someone who can also become the greatest threat to that network as an attacker.

Likewise, hand carried messages still exist even in the modern (real) world, when the danger of information security being pierced through ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) is high and Communication security can't be secured.  (notably in Battletech, if you're not moving your messages from system to system by hand, Comstar is reading your mail, and no amount of corporate contract is going to stop them from doing it.  Comms through HPG are, therefore by definition not secure.  In the real world, the military retains expertise to construct and maintain their own telecommunications for the same reason-commercial networks WILL keep and archive information for the use of authorities, and no promise made quite steps up to either profit motive or the threat of men with guns showing up to demand it.)

So communication, if it is to be secure, is going to be handled 'off the network' by couriers and military transport networks that a nation DOES control (unlike Comstar).

These suggest certain kinds of equipment, with some crossover in roles.  Neither job is going to be adequately handled by lots of assault dropships that have no interstellar range.  OTOH, you want your transportatoin security AND your couriers to be able to either outrun, or outfight, the oodles of (infinitely cheaper) dropships an enemy might use to disrupt either one or both.

Thus we can simplify the first two jobs a Navy has to fill that an Army or Air Force doesn't need to fill;

1. Transportation oversight and security.
2. Secured interstellar communication.

so we've partially described two roles here, for what a Navy is for.

[mikecj]

Tag'd for the philosophical and strategic commentaries.

[Cannonshop]

Technical Hurdles and Requirements

Requirement: a Navy for a nation built of multiple star systems.

Question: What kind of technology do you need? what is available?

The foundation of interstellar travel is the Jumpship.

This is how you have an economy, it's how you move your armies, it's how you maintain internal order and it is the thing you have a navy to protect.  Jumpships, Routes, and the movement of goods, personnel, services, and information from one part of your holding to another.

An Army can protect either end of this chain-the shipping or recieving warehouses, bases, and distribution at the origin and reception point can be quite adequately defended by ground and short-ranged air units without a lot of trouble-at least, against small raids, criminals, commandoes, and most forms of civil unrest.

The Navy protects the goods where the army can't go.

It CAN protect more, (or strike to interrupt more) but at the very most basic level, your navy is there to cover all the points between point 'A' and 'B' (Or to interrupt things for your enemies between those points.)

One might call it the lowest, most basic level of existence for a Navy.

So, what technology do you need to do this job, and what is available (Theoretically possible) to carry it out?

Obviously, you need jumpships, and dropships at the minimum.  Jumpships provide the strategic mobility (System to system, or jump point to jump point inside the system, depending on the skill of your navigation), Dropships to provide cheap punch in lieu of proper warships, or to provide supplementary punch in the presence of proper warships.

These things need fuel, maintenance, spare parts, and in the case of armed units, ammunition and additional spares.

Basic facilities that are secured, are also necessary for ongoing operations.  Stations to conduct maintenance, inspection, repair and refueling can't be done on a planet. (Jumpships can land-ONCE, after which, they cannot take off.)

Some methods will be more resource intensive than others.  For example, if you have to haul your fuel up from the bottom of an inhabited gravity well, out to the jump point, it's going to take more resources, manpower, and time, than if you have a station happily melting comets or asteroidal ice down and piping it straight to a dock...but that dock requires more initial investment, making up its cost savings in terms of operational costs instead of construction costs.

Inspection and maintenance will also tend to require a structure to conduct said maintenance, and in the case of jumpships, this structure is likely to be a station or station-like module, since gravity does bad things to jump cores.

It is advisable to have such facilities under Naval administration for the sake of security, but also for the sake of Safety-Naval personnel are more likely to be trained to at least a moderate level of competence at all times, than civilian contractors, and are more likely to tolerate basic levels of security (as well as more likely to pass a basic security screening), reducing the chance for sabotage to render your critical jumpship infrastructure mission incapable.

Such places also represent  a fixed target for an enemy, and in the case of a game universe like Battletech, a fundamental on the list of "Navy targets that aren't bombarding a planet".

Keep in mind, we don't have artificial gravity,  These are 'fixed' base locations that are not good choices for basing Battlemech units.

[Cannonshop]

Battlemechs in the Naval Context

In the last section I made an argument for areas where ground forces ("ARMY") and Navy don't meet.  This is not that section.

There ARE places where a Navy may find great use in fielding 'mech forces, tanks, and similar ground combatant units without (or in the form of) it being a Marine Corps.

Per the transportation protection role, not all basing is going to be in zero gee.  Much of what is going to be in null gee, will be without a breathable atmosphere, however.  Whether it's system command nodes, surface training facilities, ordnance bunkerage, refineries for fuel and consumables (Oxygen, nitrogen, even carbon dioxide), there are logistical requirements for a Navy that do require a gravity field (for example, to maintain muscle tone and bone health).

These places will need security.  Since they are also servicing a Navy, that security is going to need to be tighter and more extensive than similar facilities in civilian areas.

Typically, these units will be relatively small compared to House Army units, and range mostly in the middle weights with good mobility, decent armor fraction, and Hand actuators to assist with base maintenance when not on security patrol.

Training requirements would include hostile environment and vacuum warfare, training to handle varying levels of gravitation, and a focus on defensive and quick-reaction-force training to protect their bases.

Note the thing about 'hands', or rather, hand actuators.  This should be obvious, as ground combat is not the main point of your Naval forces, the ground complement will not be the majority of them, thus requiring a broader mission statement and less specialization in designs procured for the job.  Oddly enough, this is also a combination that is well suited for raiding operations against enemy facilities-and this is intentional.

Whether you call it a "Marine Corps" or a "Security Force" (or some other euphemism) Naval ground units have a defensive role in peacetime (and much of wartime) and a role as commandoes or covert raiders in times of conflict, they should therefore be fitted and kitted to handle missions ranging from static defense to lightning raids, but without the usual expansions into crowd control, occupation duty, or specialist military roles that only apply in large scale ground conflict.  Marine 'mech units should be specialized in small unit tactics working with orbital, air, and infantry support to execute small, limited objective operations on the offense of short duration, while holding for long periods when on a defensive posture through the use of local fortification and close support from other branches.

IOW you don't send in the marines to capture a planet, you send them in to destroy antiorbital defenses, seize airfields, or assassinate someone.  ARMIES are for planetary conquest, Marines are for making that conquest slightly easier.

[Tyler Jorgensson]

Tagging as well

[Cannonshop]

A Sample example of a Naval Force (Non-Canon)

Reserva Naval de Arluna

This organization is a naval reserve force serving as an auxiliary in service to the Lyran Commonwealth, headquartered in the Arluna system, and assigned as part of the assets under the control of the Melissia Theater Command.

Arluna has two spoken languages, with the majority of that world speaking Spanish (one of the official languages of the Lyran Commonwealth) and a minority in the highlands of the interior speaking a heavily accented dialect of english.

CNO (Chief of Naval Operations):  Flottenkapitän(O-6) Consuela Garcia-MacAulliffe

Escuadrón 1 (Squadron 1)

CO: Kapitan Gregorio Corvales

LCS Matamoros (Invader Class)

• Espada Corta (Claymore Class)
• LCDS Lanzia Corta(Claymore Class)
• LCDS bardo de caballos (Union CV, 2 squadrons of ASF)

LCS Ciudad Oxford  (Invader Class)

• LCDS Buckler (Claymore Class)
• LCDS Sable de Caballería (Claymore Class)
• LCDS Carro de guerra (Overlord A3, 1 sqdn ASF)
  

LCS Ciudad Nueva Madrid (Invader Class)

• LCDS Arco roto, (Union Class)
• LCDS Bola de hierro(Union CV, 2 squadrons fighters)
• LCDS Perro salvaje (Triumph Class)

Línea de batalla

CO: Hector Salvatore (Kommandant O-5)

• LCS [Las lágrimas de Diego, Type 51 gunboat
• LCS furia de las colinas  Type 51 Gunboat

Now, I made use of a couple non-canon designs that fit the role, but you could substitute a collection of canon PWS for the type 51s with something like a Scout to haul them around, or arm up a pair of colony primitives, or anything in between.  The point is that the 'mostly a real warship' designs are optimized for defending the system they're based in and operating in near-theater locations (close by systems).

This is the force most players are going to be thinking about-as in they're teh units you'll see on the star map in a fight.

There is more.

Cuerpo de Marines de Arluna

Strength: 3 Battalions plus one S&S company

Battalion 1: 1 Company 'mech, 1 Company Battlearmor (or Vacuum outfit infantry), 1 mixed company of smallcraft/fighters
Battalion 2: same as battalion 1.
Battalion 3: This is a construction/engineering force with 1 company of vac-rated construction vehicles, 1 company of 'mechs, and 1 company of vac-rated combat engineers.

Service&Support company: Vacuum rated ADA platoon, vacuum rated artillery platoon (Mechanized or vehicle), 4 MASH units (vac rated), 1 platoon Military Police. (5 platoons total)

The Cuerpo de Marines de Arluna typically deploy in mixed company strength as and where needed, *Typically on moons or large asteroids in peacetime, though a rotating duty station on the planetary capital guards the office of the CNO and participates in ceremonial duty.

Training is provided by LCAF at the Theater level.

The Arlunan naval reserve forces are a Militia force separate from the main-line ground forces militia both by budget, and command chain, and answers first to the LCN's Chief of Naval Operations for the Melissia theater, making this organization one of the few 'planetary militia' units with responsibilities outside their home system, usually supporting proper LCAF/LCN units conducting antipiracy or Search and Rescue missions, maintaining LCN bases, and providing supplementary units under Dept. of Liaison.

Scenario Uses:  Small scale 'raid' scenarios, bandit-hunting, commerce protection missions and scenarios involving ground combat in hard vacuum environments.

Over-all rating is "Regular".

[Cannonshop]

Why is my example piece a Reserve unit?

after all, the stars of the fiction tend to be either Mercenaries, or House Regulars. 

So here's why: These are guys who work all the time.

It's one of the major dividers between ground forces like 'mech units, and a Navy:  The only time you get a stand-down in the Navy, is when you have another unit relieving you.  Jobs for what you might call a 'coastal defense formation' like the example above, include a whole lot of time out and about doing scut-work for the Theater, including running commerce patrols, safety inspections on civilian craft, serving as first response for accidents and conducting search-and-rescue in hostile environments.  House Regulars can divide their time between 'going to war' and 'hanging out in the barracks waiting to go to war'.

Or going on the town.

A working navy doesn't really allow for this in the same way that, say, the 1st Royal Guards or the Syrtis Fusiliers do.  When the ship isn't being worked on in a maintenance site, it's 'at sea' either going somewhere, or patrolling somewhere, or doing some job.  Why is this?

because they have to justify their budgets.  A unit like the Syrtis Fusiliers or the Otomo can afford to spend lots of time doing Parade ground and ceremonial, because if they're not being used defensively it's a good thing, and if they're on a mission they're on the mission.

Our sample Naval unit, they don't get a lot of down-time in the same way that the Knights of the Inner Sphere, or even Davion Brigade of Guards do-you might be able to store the equipment indefinitely, but you can't store expertise, and with Naval forces, expertise is the difference between being healthy and alive, and sucking vacuum because Chuck wanted to feel the wind in his face and opened a window.

In other words, a bored crewman can kill everyone on the boat-by accident, rendering millions to billions of C-bill equivalents into a nice heap of inert uselessness.

This really has no equivalent for battlemech, tank, or planet-bound infantry.  The result is that survival habits have to be ingrained and you can't rely on theoretical classroom to replace manual habits.

Enlistment in a Naval force is, essentially, adopting a lifestyle in the space context.

The other reason I configured my example force the way I did, was to show a 'practical' sized unit for the bulk of late succession-wars era through Jihad games where you don't want to spend a week planning each move-The elements are big enough to be useful on the table top, while being small enough to be manageable in a weekend's hard campaigning-the whole force can be used as a basis for setting up space-based scenarios to carry your players from start to completion in a series of raiding type games where you have the space component, the landing, the landing assault, the withdrawal, and the escape and/or interception.

and it's modular enough you can expand it or alter small parts and expand it and have it be useful.

Specifics:

The squadron leans heavily on common designs for space warfare in the Lyran Commonwealth, but there are other assault dropships you can use instead of Claymores.  The jumpships are canonically the most common jumpships in the Inner Sphere, (aside from the pair of 'gunships', which are just 'generic substitute for a corvette or advanced PWS with dedicated jumpship hauler')

You can sub in pretty much ANY ASF design for the escort/cap fighter wings.

Ranking is kept low to allow player-character officers or 'mechwarrior officers to assume over-all command, as this is a proven state of affairs from Kerensky onward.

I left off most of the logistics.  To be really true to a proper TO&E I'd have to include the repair slips, fueling docks, and stations that keep this stuff running.

But the point of the sample force, is to provide a sample of what you can do without needing to resort to hordes of Leviathan III's.

[Deathrider6]

   *crashes through ceiling*

   One of the things Cannonshop does well is flesh out his "armies" in an organic fashion the bits fit logically. He usually only fleshes out what the world, faction or resistance group can afford to run and for the most part not totally break the setting (well not too badly). I am using him as an example only there are LOTS of other fanfic writers here that do the same thing and well.

   To get back on topic it is your playground (table) you want huge navies then you do huge navies with the support facilities and attendant ground forces. I done rough math and even being VERY conservative and using a two percent GDP number with an average tax rate of ten percent National forces in the 31st century are 10 percent of what they COULD be. You can chalk that up to corruption and graft.

   Another thing is that by design WARSHIPS are terribly expensive (ruleswise). I can field hundreds if not thousands of fighters with dropship and jumpship support. Once again an artifact of the game rules. If you are playing by the original setting it was closer to mad max in space.

   Large Warship Fleet actions while rare are messy. If you have not done so I would suggest reading any of David Weber's Honorverse books as an example of fleet battle and independent operations. He does touch on Logistics and such as well.

Below is a sample system patrol unit (without Warship support).


Kwangjong-ni Customs and Survey Squadron.


LCS Gwang Hee Park- Invader Class Jumpship
        3X Leopard CV Dropship

LCS Sun Lee Rhee - Invader Class Jumpship
         1XMule (Tanker variant)
          1XFury
          1XAvenger

    1 Seeker Class Dropship
     2 Mule Class Dropships


    24 Aerospace fighters (Avg weight is medium)

New Seoul Station (use Olympus Class w/o weapons)

 Station has attached light ASF Squadron plus a company of marine infantry.


Primary mission is pirate suppression/commerce protection works with planetary defense forces to defend system if attacked.


Depending on timeline and tech base this force can be expanded to cover more stations (I did one since Kwangjong ni is in the boonies). There are numerous facilities planetside that also provide logistic and intelligence support. There are space based remote sensor platforms in the orbitals and at la grange points. They are not FTL capable but to provide sensor coverage. Figure that there are a couple of dozen commercial droppers as well.

   As always the opinions expressed in this post are mine and your mileage may vary.


       

[Daryk]

Somehow I missed this thread, and will have to review it in more detail later (like this coming weekend).  The new infantry weapons Shrapnel has been dropping will affect this mightily...  ^-^